Newspapers form a knowledge-based industry capitalizing
on the masses' urge to stay informed. The raw material of
newspaper organizations is information, gathered from various
sources and processed by professionals like newspaper reporters,
editors, sub-editors, art directors, printers and so on.
Though the end product for the readers remains the same,
there have been revolutionary changes at the technological
front that have changed the very style of working and general
look of a newspaper office.
In the recent past, hardly
a decade ago, newspaper production in Pakistan was such
a specialist operation that making any comparison between
it and other types of printing was useless. Everything
revolved around speed of production, irrespective of the
cost. This has all changed and given way to cost-effective
technological means.
Although deadlines are
still important, the key in present day newspaper production
to find out how technology can help produce newspapers
more cheaply and of better quality.
Of all the new concepts introduced
in the print industry, the effect of the digital technology,
specifically the digital transmission of text, audio, stills
and video, has been phenomenal. "The last decade has
seen introduction of information technology in all the core
business processes in newspapers, ranging from newsgathering,
editorial, imaging, composition, production and even distribution,"
says Yousaf Rafique, news editor at a Lahore-based daily
newspaper. He says that the use of computers as a means
of processing, analyzing, and disseminating information,
and that also within real time, has dramatically changed
the working style of newspapers and made the process unbounded
by time and space.
Yousaf thinks that use
of digital cameras to take pictures, email, instant messaging
and Internet to transmit and receive messages, and transfer
heavier data over modem have significantly cut the costs
of running this business and eliminated the time consumed
in the process to the bare minimum. "Even in the
mid 1990s, most of the Pakistani newspapers were using
telephone, telex, telegraph, analogue transmitters to
obtain up-to-date information on news events and other
items from both national and international sources. Taking
and developing pictures through conventional cameras also
cost a lot of time and money. This required a huge investment
of capital and running expenses to pay heavy telephone
bills, courier charges and what not," Yousaf adds.
Waqar Gilani, a reporter
at another daily thinks that the introduction of information
technology has given an edge to reporters and added quality
to their work. "Reporters can now use email to collect
versions and conduct interviews. The Internet has turned
out to be a vast repository of background data, with seemingly
everything stored somewhere, searchable via search engines.
This has long been a dream for journalists, chronically
short of time, to bring research and background information
to the desktop," he says.
He goes on to say that
apart from the competencies of the staffers employed by
several organisations, the equipment they have is the
decisive factor when it comes to gauging their productivity.
"A well-equipped reporter working for a foreign newspaper
or agency is at much greater advantage than the typical
reporter of a local newspaper, who has to even buy his
writing paper from his own pocket. Having digital cameras,
laptops and even satellite phones, these reporters send
their reports accompanied by relevant photographs from
the very venue of reporting. We, on the other hand, have
to rush to our offices and draft our stories hours after
the news agencies have transmitted them to our papers,"
he adds.
But on the other hand,
Waqar fears that the negative impact of this use of technology
is also obvious. "It is a common practice that reporters
are slowly avoiding face-to-face interactions, phone interviews
and on-the-spot coverage. In many cases, responses received
through email are originally written by the public relation
staff employed by the interviewees."
Furthermore, the concept
of database maintenance has changed with the introduction
of the IT-enabled environment. Now all progressive papers
in the country have newspaper libraries in electronic
form, or what in commercial printing terms would be called
archiving. "Filing cabinets have been replaced by
hard drives, CD-ROMs, Internet connections and artificially
intelligent search engines, which enable the storage of
text and photographs or graphics, as well as page layout
files and multimedia material. And, above all, the procedure
to retrieve a required item, whether a news item or image,
has become highly simplified and quick," says Ijaz,
an IT professional with expertise in database management.
Though the blessings of
use of new technology have been many, there have been
social costs of this transformation as well. As the introduction
of computer-based publishing meant that same persons could
perform the roles of journalists, sub-editors and compositors,
it translated into making jobs like those of compositors,
copy pasters and typists redundant.
But the adverse effect
luckily proved to be short-lived as the affected staffers
reacted timely and equipped themselves with technical
skills to win the newly created slots.
